Question Passengers loaded through A deck screen windows?

[Bob Read]

Were any of Titanic’s passengers loaded through the A deck screen windows or only from the open promenade?

 

[Duck_Dur]

Into the lifeboats?
I would guess so

 

[Thomas Krom]

Were any of Titanic’s passengers loaded through the A deck screen windows or only from the open promenade?

Lifeboat number 4 was loaded through the windows from A-deck, while lifeboat number 11, 13 and 15 were loaded from the open promenade I would gladly send my (incomplete) collection of accounts to you on each of those lifeboats.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Lifeboat number 4 was loaded through the windows from A-deck, while lifeboat number 11, 13 and 15 were loaded from the open promenade I would gladly send my (incomplete) collection of accounts to you on each of those lifeboats.

Bob asked if any lifeboats were loaded only from the open promenade areas. While it is true that Lifeboat #4 was loaded entirely through the A-deck windows on the port side, starboard aft Lifeboats #11, #13 and #15 were first loaded from the boat deck and then lowered to the A-deck for further filling.

 

[Bob Read]

The reason I ask is because there’s a guy on a Facebook group who thinks the emergency boats were meant to be loaded at A deck for emergency operations because he thinks there were too many obstacles for the crew to board at the boat deck.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

The reason I ask is because there’s a guy on a Facebook group who thinks the emergency boats were meant to be loaded at A deck for emergency operations because he thinks there were too many obstacles for the crew to board at the boat deck.

As far as I know, that's not true. Lifeboats #1 & #2 were 'Emergency Cutters' and kept swung out on their davits that I believe meant that they were to be loaded (if necessary) and lowered from the boat deck. During the evacuation of the sinking Titanic, both #1 & #2 were loaded and lowered from the boat deck. Third Class passenger Anton Kink was an interloper on Lifeboat #2; he claimed that he 'broke through the crowd and jumped into the boat' just as it was being lowered with his wife and daughter already in it among others. His statements, if true, suggest that he did so from the boat deck but with Wilde and Captain Smith in charge and Boxhall already in the boat, I doubt it. I think Anton Kink might have jumped in from A-deck just as Lifeboat #2 was lowered past.

 

[Samuel Halpern]

The reason I ask is because there’s a guy on a Facebook group who thinks the emergency boats were meant to be loaded at A deck for emergency operations because he thinks there were too many obstacles for the crew to board at the boat deck.

If the emergency boats were supposed to be loaded from A deck for emergency purposes, then they would have been kept at A deck with open windows there. The idea of an emergency boat is for it to be loaded and launched very quickly with a crew on board, for example, to pick up someone who had fallen overboard. They were quite a bit smaller than the standard lifeboat, as you of course well know, and could be lowered in 2/3 the time from the same level.

By the way, FB seems to have more experts on maritime affairs, especially on Titanic, than the total sum of all those who had ever sailed the high seas to date. And the same pictures get posted over and over again everyday, as if nobody every saw them before, on these FB group pages. Errrr!

 

[Bob Read]

That was my point. If you wanted to launch the emergency boats from A deck, nothing would really keep you from having them secured there. This was a case of somebody who had some experience at sea who knew nothing about Titanic but thought his modern sea experience would trump any Titanic knowledge. I think we all have had experience with “old salts” who think they know it all.